RFID is making headway in the retail market worldwide. Brands see many advantages to the use of RFID technology, from ensuring inventory availability to connecting with customers.

Prüne, a family-owned fashion business in Argentina, designs and produces high-quality goods worldwide, from accessories such as wallets and handbags to jackets, clothing and shoes. They have a passion for fashion and want to make sure that their customers are taken care of. Mercedes Marques, project manager for Prüne, said that RFID plays a key role in meeting expectations.

“We use RFID technology in all our operational processes, from product manufacturing to the store,” Marques observed. “When a product is manufactured, it is identified with an RFID tag and controlled through all the supply chain (reception, picking and dispatch). In this way, we obtain visibility and absolute traceability on each item within our operation.”

Marques said that Prüne’s focus is on the customer’s shopping experience, ensuring that consumers always find the products they want to buy, in the simplest way and in the shortest time.

“The reliability of inventories provided by RFID technology is essential to provide a satisfactory shopping experience,” said Marques. “Consumers are increasingly demanding, highly informed and have everything at a click away; we must be able to adapt to their needs and fulfill their expectations.”

For Prüne, adapting RFID required overcoming some significant challenges, with Zebra playing a key role in installing operations.

“RFID implementation in Prüne represented a digital transformation of our business affecting all areas of our company,” Marques reported. “It has been the most important project we have addressed after the implementation of our ERP. We had to accompany a technological change but at the same time, cultural.”

For example, inventory management changed significantly with RFID.

“We went from an inventory control that was carried out once or twice a year to a weekly audit, with which the store teams had to adapt to new practices,” Marques noted. “The operation of the distribution center stopped reading barcodes to proceed to automatic and simultaneous processes, changing significantly operations. We had to face the natural resistance to any change, but the benefits were seen so fast that the entire team quickly adopted and liked RFID technology.

“Our operation has a very high demand for speed,” Marques added. “In that sense, we need to rely on our platforms to avoid management problems. For this reason, we decided to work with Zebra Technologies and the Smart Retail solution of Telectrónica, which has extensive experience in the market, specific experience within our industry and gave us the peace of mind of having continuity in the operation.”

Marques noted that Prüne has had some unexpected benefits from using RFID.

“Users have naturally found new use cases for RFID technology, for example, to locate products in the Distribution Center, to be able to make seasonal collection changes in a few minutes using handhelds and, they have found opportunities to have an omnichannel operation,” Marques added.

Most importantly, Prüne is receiving good feedback regarding RFID from its customers.

“Customers who visit our stores feel satisfied for two main reasons,” Marques observed. “They always find the product they want to buy, and they find an available staff member to assist and advise them. At the same time, for those who make purchases through e-commerce and choose to pick-up the order in the store, they can do it in a few minutes after completing their transaction. This is something that without RFID would never have been possible.”

As a result, Marques said that Prüne anticipates further implementing RFID in the coming year.

“Since the success in the implementation of RFID in our headquarters located in Argentina, we have replicated the project in our operations in Chile and recently in Colombia. We plan to implement the solution in our subsidiaries in Peru and Uruguay in early 2020,” Marques concluded.